Ken Sena runs a group within Wells Fargo Securities and recently introduced an artificially intelligent equity research analyst; the bot tracks stocks and put a sell rating on Facebook and Google, two of the top companies working on artificial intelligence; Sena provides his perspective on the new bot and where it might be falling short. Source
LendIt Europe 2017 keynote speaker Christoph Rieche, Iwoca CEO, announced the API with fellow fintech Tide is now live; the API allows third parties to access Iwoca’s credit and underwriting process which can decide on a loan within 10 minutes; Tide will provide Iwoca with data to help speed up credit decisions. Source.
Oakam has originated more than 420,000 loans and over $275mn to customers with little or bad credit; the UK based lender uses credit bureau data and alternative data including network associations, behavioral data and chat data between potential customers and their agents; the combination of the data sources has allowed them to better asses risk to a client base mostly ignored by traditional financial firms. Source.
The Singapore based investment firm together with Chinese investment firms Tiantu Capital and Xindahanshi Capital invested more than $72mn into the Chinese fintech Tongdun according to DealstreetAsia; Tongdun is a risk control and anti fraud service provider for financial services firms, online shopping companies and social networks; the capital will be used for research & development and expansion overseas in search of fintech partnerships. Source.
While giving a keynote speech at LendIt Europe 2017 Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche laid out his three biggest predictions for the near future; the growth of online lending will accelerate in the next 15 months, a meaningful secondary market will develop and rebundling will give birth to one major consumer product innovation in the next 15 months. Source.
PeerIQ released their third quarter marketplace lending securitization report; total issuance for the quarter was $2.6 billion down from $3 billion in the last quarter; SoFi closed two consumer deals and one student deal; Lending Club and Prosper both issued one deal; College Avenue issued their first ever student loan securitization. Source
The project will help to connect multiple digital wallets to process money transactions; they say this will allow different currencies to flow through wallets like HTTPS, SMTP and SIP information goes between web browsers according to Banking Technology; this would allow an individual making a payment through WeChat to send money to a friend who uses PayPal. Source.
Business Insider caught up with ID Finance co-founder and CEO Boris Batin at LendIt Europe; the company hopes to raise around $100 million through bond issuances over the next year; to date ID Finance has raised $10 million in equity and $70 million in debt; the startup is based Barcelona and lends in Russia, Spain, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Poland, Brazil and Mexico; ID Finance has lent $300 million so far. Source
Tom Blomfield of Monzo was recently interviewed on City A.M.’s Unregulated podcast; Blomfield said that he has been approached by big banks and tech companies and that the firm receives a takeover offer every month. Source